The Army used thousands more copies of a system than what they paid for, and tried to hack the software to get around the licenses, the software company alleges. The government is paying $50 million to make the case go away.

NSW Police has denied new claims laid against it by UK software firm Micro Focus that it tried to cover its tracks on using software without licences by using further software that it also didn't have licences for.

The University of Queensland has had issues with software licensing, because individual faculties each have a different purchasing process, making it hard to see the software being used by whom. Now, the university has adopted Flexera to keep track of software use.

An unnamed Melbourne-based advertising agency has agreed to pay $100,000 in damages to an alliance representing software companies, after it admitted it didn't have licences for all of the software it was using.

Software costs can spiral out of control if you're not very careful. From licences bought when the company was bigger or because it wasn't seen to be necessary in less stringent times to count exactly how many concurrent users the application would attract, to licences for software that's no longer used or has been superseded, it's an easy way to throw cash away.